TENURE AND USE OF ARID GRAZING LANDS, 55 
tenure into bodies of considerable size. Within the boundaries of the 
large railroad land grants, in particular, this method may be of use. 
In such areas the odd-numbered sections of each township have been 
granted to the railroad company, resulting in a checker-board ar- 
rangement of the privately owned lands, which is discussed on page 
20. Such consolidation would make the administration of the public 
lands much easier, and at the same time make possible the fencing of 
privately owned lands in bodies large enough for profitable use. 
While such a policy would benefit all parties concerned, the areas 
to which it could be applied represent but a small part of the whole 
region for which a change in land policy is necessary. These land- 
grant areas contain many millions of acres, but the total area of the 
arid grazing region is many times more; and while the consolidation 
would be beneficial at once to the privately owned lands, further legis- 
lation would still be necessary for regulating the use of the public 
lands. The only advantage gained for them would be that any new 
laws made for the administration of the public lands would be easier 
to apply on a few large areas than upon very numerous scattered 
small ones — amounting, as they do now, to thousands of sections. 
It is probable that in the present state of tenure and development 
very few of the private owners would wish to enter upon such a 
wholesale trading operation. Their lands are the better lands, for 
various reasons; the watering places are on their lands, and their 
businesses are localized about those watering places. They would 
much prefer a system by means of which they could obtain legal right 
to use the interspersed sections along with their own land. 
Wherever all the land in a series of townships belongs to the rail- 
road, the State, and the Federal Government in the ordinary checker- 
board arrangement, exchanges on a township basis might be arranged, 
though even here it would not be simple, and lessees of either State 
or railroad lands would suffer inconveniences and have difficulties in 
settlement of the relative values of watering places. 
Notwithstanding all such difficulties, the method would be a per- 
fectly fair one in certain regions and is recommended for such regions. 
The use of lieu land scrip in such transactions should be avoided. 
Transfer of the remaining public lands to the several States. — Many 
efforts have been made to transfer the public lands to the States, but 
there is little probability that such attempts will ever be successful, 
because the people generally, both in the separate States where there 
is some public land and in States that have none, are strongly opposed 
to this method of 'disposal. 
That States can make and operate lease laws that produce better 
results than our present Federal laws accomplish has already been 
noted in the case of Texas. That they frequently do make laws that 
may be temporarily beneficial but very unwise in the long run, may 
